Noted

Little sweetheart, when I was looking for that St. Barbara medal the other day I found a little something else. Tucked into an old address book (remember address books?), was a note I'd made, shortly after we met and you told me, of your birthday. I have so many things to say about our birthdays together - yours and mine. So much. An entire lengthy chapter. Count on it. But meantime, as I sign off for the night - this. Remember November. November 13th. Love you forever, my little sweetheart.

"Of Love" project...

I've been meaning to tell you about this for a while, little sweetheart. How to begin? Well, over the last year or so, independent of each other, several people - my lit agent, my filmmaker friend (Heather Winters), a few other colleagues- have encouraged me to conceive a "theatrical" (for lack of a much much better word) adaptation of Of Love and Loss, that would somehow bring the very intimate kind of experience it is hearing us play the song cycle to a slightly larger audience, with some added component, possibly, of theatre arts. I wasn't completely adverse to the idea but I didn't want it to be stupid. Elaine (my lit agent) had a program in mind that required no script, only a proposal and although we didn't ultimately get selected, it made me articulate something initially.

A few months later, little sweetheart, I met up with this woman, Nina Keneally, a theatre producer, who I've been in touch with sporadically over several years. She once wrote a really beautiful letter (back in the days when people did such things) to my previous agent about my play District of Columbia and we finally met up a few months ago so I could give her "Collected Plays". She was very moved by our story, my love, and interested to hear the music, so I gave her Of Love and Loss and happened to mention the adaptation idea. She went home and listened to the album and got very interested in the idea.

She immediately started thinking of venues and possible opportunities to work on it. She asked if I could just for a start write out all the lyrics and maybe some very simple line or two linking the songs.

I had a different idea - it's kind of hard to describe- but I wrote something. It's not really a play. It's certainly not a musical.

Some of the things I describe happening - with the band at its center and the audience close - are essentially realistic, a man and woman sitting in the space with us looking at the night sky together, her watching over him as he sleeps or he sensing her invisible (to him) presence talking to her looking in entirely the wrong direction but with utter conviction. Other descriptions are more illusory - an enormous reproduction of "Mediterraneo" (the Of Love and Loss cover) appearing brushstroke by brushstroke and at its completion, the woman emerging from the painting and the man going to her under the waves.

I don't know how we do this exactly and my thought is that it shouldn't even be in a theatre but in some found space or art gallery or a church. But Nina - whose producing credits include both the world of Broadway ("Good Vibrations", "Driving Miss Daisy", "Last Night at Ballyhoo") and the experimental music lab at American Rep Theatre, is committed to the idea. Things go wrong and people forget but at the moment this nice.

Our first foray into this is a kind of "concert performance" in Brooklyn on Oct 29. A woman in Bushwick runs this salon series of new works - art exhibits, concerts, film screenings - in an artists loft once a month. Nina knows her. We won't try to stage it at all. Jason and I will play and a friend of ours, Kim Donovan (your dad met her once, little sweetheart - she's from here but she's been working for Pixar out in NorCal since about the time you and I met) will read all we would see. Like a radio play version. Like a female narrator.

We hope it begins to give people an idea of what this might become - an evocation and testament of love and faith - in a way, while not yet staged, more powerful and intimate than listening to the album and reading the "script" at home. We hope.

Anyway, like everything, it's for you, my love. So I'm glad we're talking about it. Stay close to me, now, won't you? Don't go too far away. We're in this together, right? For now, between invisible worlds. And soon, forever, inseparable. With all my love...

Searching while shut-in...

So, little sweetheart, I have to tell you about something that happened on Monday. I had an accident. A kind of breathtaking and inexplicable wipeout while on my morning run along the Hudson, tripping and flying and landing hard on my head. It was very dramatic and bloody and nothing was broken or required stitches but I got pretty badly banged up and I'm all bandaged about my face. Gah! So, quite a story there and I'll get to telling you about it soon.

But just now, as I'm housebound, I set out to find something. I'd had a cursory look for it when Kris was here but I decided as I'm staying inside hiding my banged up face from the wider world, I'd have a proper rummage. 

Did I ever tell you this? 

My mom's best friend bought a pendant at the mission in Santa Barbara for me on the day I was born and gave it to her. When I was spending extended time living in NorCal after you and I met, my mom, who had been keeping it safely stowed somewhere and never even told me about it, sent it out there to me. I packed it away somewhere safely myself. But I was thinking that it's about time I wore it around my neck now along with my emergency dog tag (that has your mom and dad as contact), the key to Miller Drive your mom put on a piece of yarn for me, and the little silver pendent that my London friend made for me that says "Our Oneness Can Never Be Erased". 

I just found it. The pretty little pendent is of St Barbara herself. I wonder if you've met her yet on your travels, my little sprite...

Sunset Crush

The latest and 9th to date of the band's videos, little sweetheart. This one is for Sunset Crush - the closing track on the Angels album. As ever, you feature predominantly. And, as ever, for you with all my love...

Letter (to the Darkest Star)

We've been making a series of music videos, little sweetheart, and like everything, I think of them as of, for and about you. I learn something every time I do one and I like getting them out there (and here) because the music and the visuals help me keep my focus, just like the words can do, if it's about you, my love. I really believe that if I just remember always to listen closely, you will guide me with your presently invisible but always insistence presence. And I will find my way. I will find my way to you and forever. With all my love, my love...

Visitors...

Our friend DJ Krispy is visiting from London for a few days, little sweetheart. It's the first I've seen him since our trip to Ireland, the four of us - you and I and Kris and his girl, Joy. He's been following news about the band and I've been talking non-stop about you, as always, and everywhere one looks, of course, there are pictures you and touches of your invisible but insistent presence. And I told him about the Of Love project (have I told you, yet?!)and I read him what I wrote and said at your memorial, my darling, and I cried and cried. Oh, my sweetheart. I miss you so, But I love talking about you, and that is a comfort you point me to, isn't it? Didn't you say exactly that? And I know that in those moments you are doing your best - against every rule of heaven, no doubt - getting as near me as Spirit allows to guide and comfort me. To lead me to you. And I will follow. I will follow, my love.

Love Courageously

I've so much to tell you, little sweetheart, and my heart is full. Just now I want to tell you about a lovely bracelet that I found and have been wearing that makes me think of you. It says "Love Courageously" and it reminds me of all you taught me. How you filled my life with light and love and grew my heart by so lovingly attaching it to your own. I am so grateful for all you taught me, my little sweetheart. And I love you with all my heart and soul. Love courageously, indeed. Until that day, my darling. Until that day...

Remembering Boston...

Little sweetheart, I've been up in Boston for the last couple of days visiting a friend who runs a small theatre company in Cambridge. It's my second trip up here this year. The first was in the middle of February and here I am in the dog days of August. By turns the coldest and hottest points of the year. I'm staying out at my friend's place in part of town called Alewife at the end of the "T"'s Red Line. But much of the time I'm in Central Boston or Cambridge and that reminds me so much of our time here together when you were doing your play at The Huntington. I remember walking  to and from the theatre with you. It was such a nice long walk, snaking through the Boston U campus and the Berkeley School of Music, stopping at the little organic market that you liked and then coming back on my own while you were at work, so that I could gather a few things to make you a nice dinner and bake you a cake for your birthday. I loved that sweet little apartment they put you up in. It was so cozy, with its nice little kitchen and sunny front room with big windows and corner window seats. I remember watching movies together on my laptop as we cuddled in the big bed there, you with a nice diet soda at the ready. I remember waking up together in each others arms and making you a cup of your favorite mint tea, having my coffee with you at the little breakfast table. Cambridge reminds me of our trip on your day off to attend the film society's tribute to Willem Dafoe and your friend introducing us to him after. We were the only ones not drinking! I remember ow cold and snowy it was already even in early November and that the only shoes you could wear were those big black Ugg boots of yours, with the big flaming heart and the word "Love" on the back. I have those boots, my little sweetheart. Your mom gave them to me and they sit on the wooden chair here in the red table room where you always liked to set up camp - doing your makeup or running lines for an audition and where we would eat together. I loved bringing things over to set at your side and cooking for you every day. There's a lot of other things about Boston that I want to write about, other things we did like our trip to JFK Library and how patiently you meandered through it with me so clearly in thrall for hours and that when we got to the end I asked "do you wanna see it again?". So many things my sweetheart, my heart is full of. My heart is full for you. For you grew my heart, my darling. Another of the myriad gifts of light you brought into my life. And I am so grateful. Grateful as I sit here on the porch in old Alewife, having my morning coffee and saying our prayer and quietly talking to you. I love you, my little sweetheart. And I miss you. Please be with me always. And take me with you, come collect me as soon as it is allowed. Until that day, my little sweetheart. Oh, my love! Until that day...